1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to contact strips and more particularly to contact strips for attachment to the edges of wall units.
2. Prior Art
It is a common technique to equip the edge of printed circuit boards with a wall unit transversely to the plane of the circuit board, whereby the wall units make up a more or less closed wall, which contains several inserted printed circuit boards next to each other. The wall units are either closed surfaces of are equipped with plug elements which can be connected electrically to outside devices via the respective printed circuit boards. To ensure that the wall, consisting of all units, is sealed against electromagnetic stray radiation, the single wall units have to be connected to each other electrically conducting.
It is already known to arrange spring-loaded contact plates projecting from the longitudinal edges of the wall units, which are touching the contact plates of the adjoining wall units. With this design, a contact plate is fastened to each edge which faces the adjoining wall unit, which makes this solution laborious and expensive.
It is already known to fasten a contact strip with protruding contact points to the right-angled edge of a wall unit, these points having contact with the contact points of the adjoining wall element. The contact strip has embossed contact bulges over its whole length without gaps. For this reason, the contact strip becomes very stiff, so that it cannot conform to the assigned wall unit, which has become deformed due to manufacturing inaccuracies. The fitting of the contact strip, under these conditions, could be very difficult. Furthermore, the number of contact points to the adjoining wall unit is very high, that for an example, the sliding in of the contact strip between two adjoining wall elements is sometimes possible only with difficulty. Another disadvantage is seen in the fact that the contact strip is bent like a clip over the entire length also, this characteristic makes the contact strip very stiff which increases the described difficulties even more. Also, the clip arrangement requires large forces to install due to the large area of clip contact, when the wall element gets slightly thicker, for an example, when rust starts to form.
It is an object of this invention to create a contact element which is very simple in terms of production and installation and is inexpensive and which does not require a great deal of force for installation if confronted with production inaccuracies or the start of rust or such inaccuracies of the wall units.